1 91 7'] Recetitlij jmblished Ornithological IVorks. 627 



comparatively restricted, while it is noted that they all 

 appear to agree in procuring most of their food in the form 

 of seeds, sought on the ground, and fruits. 



The author considers that the claims of Brown as a 

 zoologist have been distinctly neglected, owing no doubt 

 to his eminence as a botanist : his work is shown to have 

 been very careful, and his statements are by no means to be 

 disregarded. 



Mattheio and Granger on Diatryma. 



[The skeleton of Diatryma, a gi<2;antic Bird from the Lower Eocene 

 of Wyoming. By W. D. Matthew and Walter Granger. Bull. Amer. 

 Mus. N. H. New York, xxxvii. 1917, pp. 307-326 ; 14 pis., 1 text-fig.] 



Owing to the scarcity of their remains, our knowledge 

 of fossil birds is extremely limited as compared with that of 

 mammals and reptiles. The remains of these are so abundant 

 that we now possess a sufficient knowledge to enable us to 

 trace the ancestral trees of many of the living forms. This 

 is far from being the case with birds. Of these we have 

 first the Jurassic ArchcBopteryx, then Hesperornis and Ichthy- 

 ornis of the Cretaceous, and lastly Phororhachos of the 

 South American Tertiaries. To these must now be added 

 Diatryma, of which a nearly complete skeleton has recently 

 been discovered by Mr. Stein, one of the most experienced 

 of the American Museum's collectors, in the lower Eocene 

 beds of the Bighorn basin of Wyoming. 



Diatryma was a gigantic ground-living bird with ves- 

 tigial wings. The height of the reconstructed skeleton is 

 nearly seven feet. The head and neck are quite unlike that of 

 any living bird, the neck being short and massive and the head 

 enormous, with a huge compressed beak nine inches long by 

 six inches high. The sternum is not preserved, but from 

 the fact that the coracoids appear to have met in the median 

 line, Messrs. Matthew and Granger infer that it was narrow 

 anteriorly and resembled that of Cariama rather than that of 

 the Ratites, though it probably had no keel. The shoulder- 

 girdle resembles that of the Emu-Cassowary group, but this 



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